illegal abortion stories

MONTEVIDEO: To legalise or not to legalise, that is the question on the lips of many legislators in Latin America since Argentina opted not to decriminalize abortion following a senate vote.

It did at least open the way for greater debate on a subject viewed so differently across the region in which abortion is entirely legal in Cuba and Uruguay, but where women can even be jailed for a miscarriage in El Salvador.

Jo Baxter had an illegal abortion in 1965. Now she fears the country is reverting back to a time when women couldn’t legally end a pregnancy.

Terror: That was the only emotion Jo Baxter remembers feeling as she drove from Nebraska to Kansas. It was a Saturday morning in 1965—eight years before abortion was legalized in the United States—when the college junior got into a car with her boyfriend and another friend who agreed to drive the six hours so Baxter could get an illegal abortion from a man she’d never met.

By Renata Brit, Sarah DiLorenzo
The Associated Press on January 4, 2018

RIO DE JANEIRO — The doctor was late. So the women sat quietly in the waiting area of a clinic in an upscale neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro until they were overcome by thoughts of what they were about to do and what might happen to them. They began to talk.

One woman said she was in a relationship with a drug lord and knew he would force her to have “his” baby if he found out she was pregnant. Another was a successful businesswoman who had separated from her children’s father and become pregnant accidentally by another man. A third just cried.

Yaa Serwaa was 15 years old when she had an unsafe abortion. She became pregnant after two years in a relationship that she "did not take seriously".

Serwaa confides: "I relied on natural contraception, using the calendar method but it was ineffective”.

With the help of a friend Serwaa said she prepared and applied some herbs to terminate the pregnancy. "I drank the concoction behind closed doors, in a small room that no one could see me, not even my biological mother”, she said.

What It’s Like To Get An Illegal Abortion, From 4 Women Who Know Firsthand“Abortions will continue regardless of whether it’s legal or not legal ― as it always has.”
02/20/2017
By Alanna Vagianos

“He said, ‘I’m not going to give you any anesthetic’ and he said ‘If you scream, they will hear you.’”

That’s how Connie described the illegal abortion she received in 1953 when she was 16 years old. Now a retired teacher, mother and grandmother, Connie said that after she received the abortion, the man who performed the procedure proceeded to sexually assault her as she lay bleeding on the table.

“No one should have to go through this alone, so I studied hard and I became like an underground expert in abortion.”
by Susie Armitage, BuzzFeed Global Managing Editor
posted on Jan. 26, 2017

Six countries completely ban abortion, even when it’s necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life. Dozens more have very limited exceptions that make most abortions illegal.

As abortion access continues to be threatened, discussed and hotly debated around the globe, there’s one perspective we don’t often hear enough of: people who have actually had an abortion.

BuzzFeed Health asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about their abortions. The form was shared widely and translated into multiple languages. We received over 1,200 responses to the English form alone.